Cristobel

In the humid, sweltering heat of the Caribbean, something cold and deadly stirs.

Deserted by his mother, J.C. spends his school holidays at her old family home, a lush tropical estate known as Cristobel. There, too, is his brother August, his stepfather Marcus Leyland and Marcus's new young wife Justine. But something is wrong. The Cane Cave where the rum kegs are kept feels remote and mysterious. Once J.C.'s favourite spot, it now terrifies him. Justine too suffers from a strange distress, driven inexplicably to attempt suicide by jumping over the cliff one hot night. Marcus, usually so aloof, fears for her sanity and turns to his psychiatrist brother for urgent help. Stefan Leyland is not convinced that Justine is mad. Her anguish and J.C.'s terror have disturbingly similar elements. Can it be that somebody is deliberately trying to hurt them? There's Remus, a local boy who bears a long-standing grudge; Amalie, J.C.'s Haitian nurse, rumoured to be a witch; and the strange presence of the ghostly woman in white...

Reason struggles against voudun threats and the dead become indistinguishable from the living as the storms threaten to break over Cristobel.